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Africans call for end to the ivory trade

By
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE in
WASHINGTON DC

WILDLIFE campaigners and several African nations will call for African
elephants to be listed as an endangered species at the world’s foremost
conservation meeting in October. The listing would automatically impose
a ban on all trade in ivory. They also will press governments around the
world to stop all imports of ivory now to head off a poaching spree in advance
of the ban.

The moves are an acceptance that many years of efforts to save the African
elephant by controlling rather than banning trade in ivory have failed.

Trade in ivory has boomed over the past few decades to the point where
the African elephant could be nearly extinct within 20 years, according
to wildlife biologists. In the past 10 years, the elephant population has
declined by half, from 1.3 million to about 625 000.

Last week in Washington, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Wildlife
Conservation International (WCI) announced the results of a 10-month study
of elephants and ivory by a team of scientists and trade experts. The team,
called the Ivory Trade Review Group, tracked elephants and their ivory from
the savannas and forests of Africa to the markets of Hong Kong and Tokyo,
where most raw ivory ends up.

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According to the wildlife groups, Tanzania, Kenya, Gambia and Somalia
have formally petitioned the secretariat that runs the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) to list the
African elephant on Appendix I, which would ban trade in its products. Chad,
Niger and Zambia have also announced their support for the move.

Most of the world’s countries have agreed to abide by CITES, which will
be reviewed in October at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland. The African
elephant is currently listed on Appendix II, which allows some trade, with
permits, in its ivory and skin.

‘The concept of controlled trade is a pipe dream,’ concludes Curtis
Bohlen of the WWF. According to Kenyan biologist David Western of the WCI,
and a member of the ivory review group, the largest consumers of ivory –
Asians who carve it or use it for Japanese printing blocks – are sufficiently
rich that economic restrictions have little effect. African poachers, increasingly
well-armed and organised, can earn what would be a year’s income in their
countries from one set of tusks, which sells for about $200 per kilogram.

Western estimates that perhaps 80 per cent of the ivory leaving Africa
is traded illegally. Elephants are often killed in parks and game reserves,
where hunting is forbidden. Recently, African exporters have taken to carving
some of the tusks before shipping them abroad; trade in carved ivory is
permitted. The largest exporters are Sudan, Burundi (which has no elephants
on its territory but serves as a conduit for ivory from other nations),
Congo, Central African Republic, Zaire and Tanzania.

The ivory review group concludes that no more than 50 tonnes of ivory
can be exported from Africa each year without further diminishing the elephant
population. In 1987, the group estimates, about 300 tonnes left the continent,
down from a peak of 900 tonnes in 1979.

Many more elephants must be killed now to satisfy the demand, says Western.
Most of the large bull elephants, whose tusks could reach several metres
and weigh up to about 80 kilograms, have been killed. In 1979, the mean
weight of tusks being traded was 9.8 kilograms; a tonne of ivory required
the killing of 54 elephants. In 1987, the mean tusk weight had dropped to
4.7 kilograms, indicating that hunters were taking younger and younger elephants.

It now takes more than 100 elephants to obtain a tonne of ivory. Meanwhile,
with fewer mature males around, breeding patterns are showing evidence of
disruption.

Listing on Appendix I is no guarantee that the elephant will be saved.
Wildlife groups put the black rhino on Appendix I of CITES some years ago
but failed to halt trade in rhino horns. Moreover, any country may take
a ‘reservation’ to a listing and essentially ignore it, as Japan has done
with whales. But, says Jorgen Thomsen, of the WWF, elephants are on someone’s
territory, unlike whales in the open sea, and so are more amenable to counting
and control.

Western says that Japanese groups representing the ivory trade met in
Africa with the ivory group last year and ‘were very nervous that they would
be blamed for creating the decline’ in elephants. He notes that trips to
Japan planned by African officials would be likely to have a greater effect
in stemming the demand than complaints from the West. He also notes that
as a Crown colony Hong Kong could be dissuaded by Britain from taking a
reservation to a CITES listing.

The wildlife groups warn that poachers will probably step up their hunting
in anticipation of any listing of the elephant as an endangered species.
Such a listing could probably not occur until next January.

In the meantime, says Western, wealthy nations should add to the $18
million that several wildlife organisations and the European Community have
put up over the next four years to protect the species. Western hopes to
convince Japan to contribute as well. In the US, the wildlife groups asked
the government to ban all imports of ivory immediately. This week President
George Bush responded with a ban on imports of ivory.

The money would implement an elephant action plan. This would identify
about 40 critical herds in different countries whose protection would best
preserve the diversity in the species’ genetic makeup and habitat.

Some of the money will also go to encourage local rural populations
to keep poachers out. That could include simply paying informants more than
the poachers pay people to keep quiet, says Western. Or it could help to
convince people that the income from tourism that the elephant draws far
outweighs that from poachers.